PilotEdge Forums

I was in a real world scenario and had a question - I hope the answer is simple but wanted to hear what other pilots had to say...

With a VFR departure out of class Charlie, when do I need to call Clearance/Delivery vs contacting ground for that information?

Some AF/D's have clearance listed, but then they quickly tell you to contact ground... is that a situation where clearance might not be staffed, or vfr departures simply might not be tracked by all class charlie clearance? I know with RDU, where I flew today, we have clearance, and all departing traffic calls them first... where as at GSP, you call up ground for that information instead...

Whats the official rule here?

Hello,

I find Class C airspace to be extremely interesting since many of the procedures are unique to the specific facility over which it resides. In ZNY, we have two airports, ABE and ISP, and both facilities handle their VFR traffic differently. To some extent, I think that it is fair to say that each airport has a unique way of handling traffic and the answer as to their method of operation can be determined by listening to the ATIS, looking in the A/FD, or, what I personally do, calling up one of the FBO's and asking the locals about specific operating procedures.

In my experience, I have always understood to call Clearance Delivery at Class C airports for both VFR and IFR departures. Often times this enables the ground controller to focus their transmissions solely on aircraft taxiing on the movement areas and not on issuing clearances. Even if the clearance and ground position is combined (i.e., worked by the same person) they are generally monitoring and transmitting on both the clearance and ground frequencies. At my home airport, FRG, the ground controller works the clearance delivery frequency and so you will often hear them issuing IFR clearances even when tuned to ground.

In regards to your question, I'll refer to a previous post by Keith Smith:

...some Class C airports insist on pilots calling Clearance Delivery, others do not. I just flew out of a Charlie last week and called ground for taxi with my direction of flight and intended cruise altitude....and off I went.

John Wayne Airport (SNA) happens to be one of the facilities that insist on VFR departures contacting clearance delivery. On PE, we treat this particular procedure the same at all of the Class C airports.

As previously quoted by Peter Grey, PilotEdge Director of Quality Assurance and Operations:

Peter Grey wrote:As a general real life rule, follow the ATIS. It will generally tell you who to contact .

Unfortunately, here at PilotEdge we don't control your ATIS, so we teach our controllers the following rules (which roughly follow what you find in the real world, but have some variance in some cases):

If you are flying IFR always call clearance delivery if it exists.
For VFR flights you never need to call clearance delivery at a Class D airport,.
You generally should at Class C airports (but its not 100%, real world it's around 50%. most of our controllers will want you to call delivery as that is more common then not in socal)
You should always call delivery at a Class B airport.

Here is the link to the other post: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2773&hilit=clearanc ... y&start=10

I hope this helps you. Enjoy your flights!

Absolutely helpful information - So basically if its not published in a doc, or in the ATIS, call Clearance and they would redirect you if necessary.

Thanks!